High-strength glass for space exploration created from waste in Siberia

A team of SFU scientists was able to obtain high-strength glass for construction and space using mining waste. Such a replacement of pure chemicals required in production can reduce the cost of finished products. The results are presented in the publication "SFU Journal. Chemistry".

Glasses are a type of material whose chemical structure is not ordered, such as in minerals. Household window glass does not contain crystals, which causes its fragility. In the construction industry and for the production of ships, rockets and aircraft, so-called glass-crystalline materials (ceramics) with increased strength and wear resistance are used instead of amorphous glass. Improved performance characteristics occur due to the partial transition of unstructured melt into small crystals that "reinforce" the amorphous material.

"Currently, glass-crystalline materials are obtained by melting powdered pure oxide materials (SiO2, MgO, Al2O3, etc.) at high temperatures. At the same time, the processes of their purification from impurities (primarily from coloring oxides) are long and energy-intensive. In addition, the reserves of ore raw materials that meet the requirements of raw materials for the glass industry are depleted over time," the experts noted in the publication.

Scientists from the Siberian Federal University (SFU), together with colleagues from the Institute of Space Technologies of the Kola Science Center of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, proposed using mining waste instead of purified reagents for the production of glass-crystalline materials. Such a replacement of the initial reagents made it possible not only to obtain a high-quality product, but also to reduce energy costs for the melting process due to a decrease in the required sintering temperature of the substances.

According to the text of the publication, in laboratory experiments, scientists obtained a material that is transparent to visible and infrared radiation, which may be necessary in the manufacture of glassware for chemical analysis. The researchers used rocks containing limestone and dunite, a mineral that is widely used to build sauna stoves, as their source materials. This mineral is found in nature in black or dark green, which, thanks to glass manufacturing technology, is lost during processing.

The advantage of the technology is the ability to regulate the chemical composition of the melt with the removal of coloring metal oxides into the metal phase during the process of reducing melting, the publication notes.

Source: ria.ru